• Use a keycard to activate an action box, or
• Recall to produce resources and regain your keycards.

When you use a keycard, you activate the abilities of the keycard itself and the effects of the chosen action box. The chosen combination of keycard and action box will therefore determine what you get to do on your turn: populate the lands, move your followers, explore new regions, and build workshops, vaults, or monuments. During the game, you will improve your tribe by acquiring new keycards, upgrading your action boxes, or collecting ability stones and relics.

An important part of the game is searching dig sites for traces of ancient civilizations. These sites unlock access to the abilities and gadgets of ancient tribes, in addition to providing important scoring opportunities.

Three times during the game, players must choose one of two paths, with the chosen path providing an immediate bonus, as well as boosting one of the endgame scoring categories.

By using the optional digital companion website, players can archive their tribes at the end of their game, thereby making their tribes discoverable as ancient civilizations in other players’ games.

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You are the silent hand. One of 8 unwitting pawns will be your key to securing ultimate power. But your rival hides their own machinations to challenge you. Can you deduce their identity and eliminate them? Remove three key political targets? Or simply waltz in undetected and seize the throne?

ENTHRONE is an abstract, two-player deduction game. The roughly octagonal, diecut board is ringed by 8 beautifully crafted figures, busts representing the potential heir to the throne; the reigning King, the Priestess, the Knight, the Jester, the Demon, the Assassin, the Archer and the Wizard.

Each player is dealt three identity cards, each showing one of the above pawns. You will choose one whom you intend to Enthrone. You also know the other two identities you did not choose – are not the identity of your opponent. They have the same knowledge – and two identities are left forever unknown by any player.

You win if you can advance your pawn to the throne space at the center of the board. OR you can win by deducing who your opponent is and capturing and eliminating their pawn. OR you can have the three target identities listed on the bottom of your card eliminated from the game (by you or your opponent’s handiwork).

But the magic of the game is which pieces can be activated each turn – and what they are capable of, based on their position on the tile track. Hex Tiles on the bottom three positions are locked and cannot be moved. The top five can move by placing the tile on the bottom of the Hex tiles and pushing all tiles above it up one notch. Tiles in the top two spaces are the only ones capable of capturing and eliminating a piece. Tiles in the top three positions are the only once who can be moved to the Throne space (so long as it is YOUR pawn). Manipulating and strategizing how to move and position these tiles to suit your agenda is critical. Keeping your identity secret, while unveiling your opponents is the tension.

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The game is played over a variable number of rounds until a number of game-end achievements are collectively claimed by the players. The winner is the faction with the most victory points, which are obtained by researching technologies, improving their economy, controlling and colonizing systems, and completing various achievements and events throughout the game.

On a turn, a player moves their action pawn to an empty action space, then takes that action. They then conduct their production phase, either producing ore, growing their population, or trading one of those resources for another. Finally, they can claim up to one achievement, if possible.

As players take actions, they research new technologies that come in four levels. Each technology is one of four types (scientific, economic, military, commercial), and higher-level technologies must match one of the types of tech that lead into it. Thus, players create their own technology tree in each game, using these actions to increase their military strength, to jump to different habitable exoplanetary systems, to colonize those systems, to boost their resource production, to develop android tech that allows growth without population, and more.

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Each of the six captains comes with a unique, asymmetric deck of cards themed to that captain’s personality strategies, allies, and assets. Each deck creates different strategic directions based on which common cards are available and what strategy your opponent deploys. The captains to choose from are:

Jean-Luc Picard
Benjamin Sisko
Michael Burnham
Koloth, The Dahar Master
Sela
Thy’lek Shran
True to Star Trek, antagonism will not win every game. You will need to pursue diplomacy, exploration, and science, with different captains excelling at different paths. With hundreds of unique, deeply thematic cards, you’ll want to explore the galaxy again and again! The chair is yours, Captain!

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Each player chooses one of the nine unique and asymmetrical alien races that have come together to form a trade federation in their quadrant. Each race has its own deck of cards representing all the existing and future technologies it might research. Some races also have other cards related to unique features of their culture. These cards represent portions of the culture’s economy and require spending some number of cubes to use, resulting in an output of more cubes, ships, and possibly victory points. Since each culture’s outputs rarely match their inputs, players need to trade goods with one another to run their converters to create the resources they truly need to run their society most efficiently and have an effective economy. Almost everything is negotiable, including colonies, ships, and all kinds of resources.

Each game round contains an open trading phase in which all players can negotiate and execute deals for cubes, ships, colonies, even the temporary use of technologies! Players with enough resources can also research technologies, upgrade colonies, and spend resources on their race’s special cards during this phase. Once complete, all players simultaneously run their economies, spending resources to gain more resources. The Confluence follows, starting with players sharing newly researched technologies with all other races and following with bidding to acquire new colonies and research teams. Researching a new technology grants many victory points for the prestige of helping galactic society advance. When one race builds a new technology, it is shared with everyone else. Technologies can be upgraded when combined with other technologies.

The ultimate goal is victory points, which are acquired by researching technologies, using your economy to convert resources to goods, and converting your leftover goods into points at the end of the game.

The game is almost all simultaneous play.

Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition features the same gameplay as the first edition of the game from 2017, but features an updated card layout, a teaching guide, and an improved rulebook for easy set-up and learning with more visual examples and clear key terms.

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After countless hours of reviewing new information and consuming an unquantifiable amount of caffeinated beverages, the team that brought you The Plum Island Horror is back with a new expansion chock-full with . . . well . . . more of a bad thing.

More of a Bad Thing introduces:
Three new playable Factions
New Scenarios including a Nightmare Mode that significantly ratchets up the difficulty
New Mutations, Search cards, Fate Cards, and Events
Location manipulation and much more

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Using a new, unique combination of hidden bidding and worker placement, players manage resources to craft various musical instruments in their workshop, while also courting actual historic patrons through an ever-changing personal tableau of actions and bonuses. Each player chooses how to balance improving skills across multiple tracks, unlocking specialized worker abilities and other bonuses. The choice to concentrate on varying gameplay strategies and goals, such as musical performances, instrument building and repairs, apprentice training and workshop expansion, and overall reputation as an instrument maker, provide multiple paths to victory.

Luthier finds true harmony through an authentic and original marriage of theme and mechanisms, resulting in a rich gameplay experience that equally speaks to both the strategic gamer and the classical music lover.

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During the game, players invest in new industries, build factories and railroads, and produce goods to saturate local markets and fulfill contracts — all to grow their influence and power and to become rulers of the new modernized country. Players are free to choose their playstyle and winning strategy: They choose what they score victory points for, control the game’s pace with income turns, and race each other to get the most beneficial factories, markets, and bonuses.

All the core mechanisms of the original Nippon are present, but the components, art, and design are upgraded, and many gameplay features are reworked to get the game in line with modern trends. Nippon: Zaibatsu features new resource types, ships are heavily revised with new Iwakura mission rules, factories are much more variable, consolidation turns provide players with new rewards, and much more. Also, the game now has an automa-driven solo mode.

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