Autumn is coming to an end in the Savernake Forest… Help the animals gather and store food for the winter! Savernake forest is a game where 2-4 players build their own section of the forest with paths where animals and food will appear. To get the highest score players must ensure that on each path the animals can collect their favorite food.Foxes hedgehogs beavers owls rabbits woodpeckers wild cats... Up to 23 different types of animals live together in the Savernake Forest. At the end of autumn they all prepare to spend the cold winter with enough provisions and here you are to give them a hand… Or a paw! To play Savernake Forest you have two decks of square cards one showing the animals and the other with forest paths full of succulent food. Each player is randomly given an animal card showing how many foods they can store and their preferences. For example the fox loves eggs but not berries or nuts. To get the best score you must try to get each animal to collect its favorite foods.During setup three road cards and one animal card are laid out for all players to see. Each player on his turn will choose one of them and add it to his forest always respecting three rules: there can never be two animals on the same path; cards must be adjacent and no cards can be placed outside of a 4x4 grid. The game ends when all participants have completed their forest with a total of 16 cards.Throughout the game players will have the help of some animals depending on the card they choose from the central market. The rooster will help you get up early so you can be the first to choose a card in the next turn. The armadillo teaches you how to dig better shelters to store more food so you can take a burrow token and add it to one of your animal cards to increase that animal's storage capacity by 1. The goat teaches you to hydrate yourself better offering a water drop token that can be associated with a food and increase its value by 1. Finally the rabbit helps you attract new animals to your forest.For players looking for more advanced challenges the rulebook includes a two-player variant with some modifications that increase the difficulty. Quite a boost if you already master the basic rules!With a dreamy art Savernake Forest offers a perfect balance between fun and strategy that makes it perfect for any type of playgroup. Family and friends will have a great time helping the animals of the forest while trying to make the most of their paths to reach the highest score. Stroll through Savernake in the fall and be swept away by the enchantment of its wildlife!—description from the publisher
Mental Blocks is a game of puzzling perspectives with players trying to complete a puzzle using oversized foam blocks despite seeing only one perspective of the design. You have to co-operate to complete the puzzle as a team but you have a time limit so don't just sit around staring at the pieces. In addition to the time pressure players have other challenges such as not being able to talk or to touch certain color blocks.Mental Blocks features sixty puzzles: thirty family mode puzzles and thirty challenge mode puzzles that ramp in difficulty. For an even wilder game you can add a traitor to the table to block your block-building...
Description from the publisher:Align them all! In Bubblee Pop players compete head-to-head to save Bubblees by aligning three of them horizontally or vertically. Once aligned the Bubblees give the player points and trigger special powers. If you pile them the wrong way though you risk losing the game immediately.
In Axio players take turns adding tiles to a shared playing area. Each time you play a tile — with tiles bearing one or two colored symbols — you score points for symbols of the same type that are in rows extending from the recently-placed tile. Tiles can be placed on other tiles in some situations.When the game ends players check the scores for each of their symbols and their final score is equal to the lowest value among them. Whichever player has the highest low score wins!
Pyramid Poker is a two-player design that consists of 54 wooden rectangular blocks 52 of them with the standard card deck distribution (2-A in four suits) on one side and two of them with a pharaoh on one side.To set up the game place all of the blocks face down and shuffle them. Each player then takes fifteen blocks. They take turns looking at one of their blocks and placing them into a two-dimensional pyramid-shaped structure again seeing only their blocks then they take turns removing any one block from the pyramid and placing it into one of three poker hands that they're constructing. Each poker hand is competing against the one opposite it that's being built by the opponent.If a player draws a pharaoh they draw three face-down blocks that weren't initially chosen discard two of them then add the third block to one of their poker hands.Once all the blocks have been removed the player who wins two or three of the poker hands wins!
An Emperor's life is stressful and full of tough decisions. He absolutely needs a place of solace where he can relax and recover. A beautiful garden filled with paths statues and flora is just what he needs.In Zen Garden the players assume the role of architects working to build the most beautiful garden for the Emperor. To do this they need to pay careful attention to the Emperor's preferences while trying to stay one step ahead of the competition.A turn in Zen Garden is simple: The first player selects one tile from the selection board pays its cost then adds it to their garden adjacent to a previously placed tile. Each player does this then the board is refilled and a new starting player begins the next turn.Zen Garden comes with five preference boards that determine which features of the garden score in that game. The boards selected (and their number) will greatly change the objectives players will strive for in that game.—description from the publisher
The Portuguese King has called the finest stonemasons of the country to pave one of the most important squares with calçada tiles (worldwide famous black and white tiles that pave several squares in Portugal). But the task is enormous and players will have to count with the aid of helper cards who will help them score points and/or collect money.In Rossio players start the game by drawing five cards and keeping three of them on their hands.On a player's turn players will first recruit a card from their hands placing it on the rightmost space under their player board sliding to the left all cards previously recruited discarding the card that slides off their boards (under each player board there are only 3 card slots). If the newly recruited card is played face-up players must pay its cost in coins. If the card is played face-down no money needs to be spent.Then ALL cards under a player board will activate: face-up cards will give the player Points for each time the pattern depicted on the card is found on the square. Face-down cards will provide the player 1 coin each.Then players must build the leftmost calçada tile of their player boards. Players can never voluntarily change the order of the tiles on their board. At any moment players can however spend 1 coin to swap 2 pieces on their board that are orthogonally adjacent. The tile must be built in the square orthogonally adjacent to at least 2 elements: 1 tile and 1 wall or 2 tiles. And must be built on the leftmost available space of the line it is being built. If the players manage to build orthogonally adjacent to a similar tile they can as bonus build the next leftmost tile and so on until they decide to stop or until they can't build more. Players collect then 1 coin for each coin depicted on the spaces that were left free on their player boards after tiles were built.Finally players end their turn by drawing 1 card into their hand from the 4 cards available on the market. However the amount of cards players can choose from depends on the number of tiles that they have built. So if players build only 1 tile they must take the 1st card. If they build 3 tiles for example they can choose between the 1st 2nd or 3rd cards. Players end their turns by refilling the empty spaces of their player boards with tiles from the facedown stacks.As the square is being cooperatively built certain patterns appear more often than others and the scoring of face-up cards becomes exponential. Also when players complete a column they collect a bonus that can be either 1 coin or drawing more cards. Money is very tight in this game so gaining an extra coin can be crucial to recruiting a card from your hand face-up.The game ends when the square is finished and the player with most points wins the game.Rossio is all about timing: Recruit a card face-up late in the game and then it will score fewer times than expected. Recruit it too early and it will score you a few points since there are few tiles built on the square. To many cards recruited face down will give that extra amount of money but they won't score any points. Build several tiles and you're probably helping your opponents. Build fewer tiles and you probably won't have money next turn to recruit a face-up card.Rossio is a game with very simple rules but with high interaction between players and interesting decisions every single turn.—description from the designer
In Splitter you must group numbers together to score points — two 2s three 3s and so on — but you're placing two numbers at a time so things won't always work out.Each player has their own score sheet with 44 empty spaces on it with two different patterns of spaces included in the box; each pattern has a dashed line through the middle that splits it into two mirrored halves.On a turn someone rolls two six-sided dice. Each player then writes the results e.g. 1 and 4 in empty spaces in the pattern with each number being in the mirrored space of the other. If say you place the 1 in the leftmost space of the top row then you must place the 4 in the rightmost space of the top row.After 22 dice rolls everyone's pattern will be filled. Each 1 on its own — that is with no other 1s orthogonally adjacent — scores 1 point; each set of two 2s that have no other orthogonally adjacent 2s score 2 points; and so on up to a set of six 6s with no other orthogonally adjacent 6s being worth 6 points. A starred space is present on each half of the pattern and a scored group that contains this starred space has its points doubled. (One pattern has a set of three spaces with hearts and if you fill all three hearts with the same number you score 5 points.)Whoever has the highest score wins.
Award-winning quilt makers devote considerable effort to collecting fabrics for their stashes. They shop for specific colors often ranging into neighboring hues to achieve a nuanced scrappy look. Quilters love a sale where they may buy fabric just to have it on hand. If they can't find the colors they want they sometimes hand dye their own fabric. They use their time and skills converting fabric into blocks which they combine to make quilts. Often quilters work on more than one quilt at a time to keep things interesting. They may embellish their quilts with intricate quilting stitches. The best quilters make good color choices combine blocks skillfully use their time well and win generous purchase awards when they enter their quilts in shows.In Quilt Show quilters collect fabric cards which can be exchanged for block tiles. The quilters race the clock as they amass block tiles that they can combine into one or more quilts at a time. They can mix block tiles of a single color or a single pattern to make a quilt. Three times during the game when the clock reveals it is time for a quilt show quilts are entered and prize money is awarded. At game's end the quilter with the most prize money wins!
