Have a view at which games were bought by the Club during this last weeks of 2014 : it’s already Christmas.

Our buyers decided to go for the following games :

– Alien Frontiers : A game of resource management and planetary development for two to four players. During the game you will utilize orbital facilities and alien technology to build colony domes in strategic locations to control the newly discovered world. The dice represent the space ships in your fleet. You will assign these ships to the orbital facilities in order to earn resources, expand your fleet, and colonize the planet. As the game progresses, you will place your colony tokens on the planet to represent the amount of control you have over each territory. Those territories exert influence over specific orbital facilities and, if you control a territory, you are able to utilize that sway to your advantage.

– Colt Express : You play a bandit robbing a train at the same time as other bandits, and your goal is to become the richest outlaw of the Old West. The game consists of five rounds, and each round has two phases: Phase 1: Schemin’ Each player plays 2-5 action cards on a common pile, with the cards being face up or face down depending on the type of the round. Instead of playing a card, a player can draw three cards from her deck. Phase 2: Stealin’ The action cards are carried out in the order they were played, with a player’s best laid plans possibly not panning out due to mistakes and oversights! The game takes place in a 3D train in which the bandits can move from one car to another, run on the roof, punch the other bandits, shoot them, rob the passengers, or draw the Marshal out of position. The train has as many cars as the number of players, and each car is seeded with gems, bags of loot or suitcases at the start of play. At the end of the game, whoever fired the most bullets receives a $1,000 braggart bonus, and whoever bagged the richest haul wins!

– L’Aéropostale : Mixes competition and conquests while retracing the epic history of the first airline companies. As the head of one of these airline companies, your objective is to give it the most prestige possible by creating stopovers and by exploiting commercial lines. Participating in meetings, beating records, and having more and more successful planes will serve your strategy.

– 1812 : The Invasion of Canada : Players take on one of the roles of the major factions that took part in the War of 1812. On the British side these are represented by the British Regulars (Redcoats), Canadian Militia and Native Americans; and the American Regular Army and American Militia comprise the American players. Players for each side will cooperate with each other in order to plan and conduct their campaigns. Each side will attempt to capture Objective Areas on the map. When a truce is called, the side that controls the most enemy Objective Areas wins.

– Medieval Academy : Each player takes the role of a squire who wants to outdo the others in the different training categories to score Chivalry Points. To achieve this goal, during the six turns of the game, the players must wisely draft the cards that are the most useful to them and play them at the right time to move their discs up the training tracks. At the end of turn VI, the squire who has the most Chivalry Points wins the game and is knighted by King Arthur!

– Hansa Teutonica : The players act as traders trying to get victory points for building a network of offices, controlling cities, collecting bonus markers or for other traders using the cities they control. After controlling a line between two cities with your pawns you can decide to build an office (and maybe also establish control and/or get a bonus marker) or to get a skill improvement from some of the cities. Players have to improve their traders’ “skills” for the following effects: getting more VP from offices in their network, getting more available action points, increasing the number of available pawns, and getting the right to place pawns and get more special pawns.

And for the kids section :

– Oereka! : Players work in teams to construct fabulous – well, let’s say “functional” – structures out of materials lying around them. All the players are cavemen, however, so you have only rough blocks with which to build and you can communicate only through primitive gestures and sounds. Ugungu! When you’re the architect on your team, you see a building plan that shows how the blocks should be placed in the finished design. To get the builders on your team to do the heavy work, you must tell them which piece to use – through gestures like stomping your feet or raising your arms above your head – and what to do with it. “Manungu” tells them to put the piece at the front of the structure, while “Manungu manungu” means to put it at the back. Moving pieces left or right, up or down, laying them down or rotating them – lots of details need to be conveyed with only a few commands and your trusty (inflatable) spiked club. When you give a command and your team performs well, tap them on the head once to show approval. Hit them twice, though, and they know they messed up and need to pay better attention. I said, “Karungu!!” (stomp stomp stomp). The fastest – and most accurate – architect/building team will carry the day…

– Geister, Geister, Schatzsuchmeister! : In a dark and dreary house, every sound sends a cold chill through your bones. A door opens – is someone there? You hear whispers, but no one answers when you call. Your eyes and ears may deceive you, but the hair on your neck tells you what you already know: There are ghosts here — and not just one for these spirits are legion. Four intrepid treasure hunters are on a quest, searching for precious hidden jewels, but the phantoms in this house do not give up their bounty easily. As their ghoulish numbers grow, the treasure hunters must work together to acquire all eight jewels and escape the house before it becomes fully haunted or else face their own gruesome demise. Players roll dice to determine how many spaces they move this turn and whether a new ghost is added to the board. Players may move up to the number of spaces shown on the die. If they end their movement in a space with a treasure, they may pick it up and place it in their backpack. If they end their movement in a space with a ghost, they fight that ghost by rolling a fight die. If they roll the matching symbol, they remove the ghost from the game board. If the players must add a third ghost to a room, it transforms into a haunting. A haunting requires at least two people in the room to attempt a fight with it. Players win if they can get all eight treasures and their whole team out of the house; they lose if all six hauntings are on the board.

– Der unendliche Fluss : The players need to help the three magicians find the right way to six ports, but instead of moving the figures and the boats, they’ll move the entire game! Each round the children receive a secret assignment that tells them where their particular magician needs to go, but since the unending river is constantly in motion, they might accidentally bring some other mage to that destination…

– Le Lièvre et la Tortue : At the start of a race, each player secretly bets on one of five animals: turtle, rabbit, lamb, wolf and fox. One animal is chosen at random for each player, then after receiving a hand of seven cards, each player places one of his cards face-down (possibly the same animal) as an additional bet. Players then take turns laying down 1-4 cards, with all cards needing to show the same animal, then refilling the hand to five cards. As soon as eight total cards have been played or four cards of any one animal, the animals move (maybe). Each animal has a distinct characteristic that players can use to their advantage. The turtle always moves one space, but it moves two if four of its cards were played. The rabbit always moves two spaces as long as cards are played. — unless four cards are played and it’s at the head of the pack, in which case it sleeps and doesn’t move. The fox moves as many spaces as the number of cards played. The lamb moves one more space than the number of cards played — but if it reaches water, it stops moving to take a drink. The wolf moves 1 space if one to two cards are played, and one less space than the number of cards if more are played. The wolf also has 3 cards with a howl, if one of these is played no one but the wolf moves.(The track consists of eleven road cards, two covered with water.) After the animals move, players start a new round of card-playing. A round ends when three of the four animals reach the goal, after which each player scores points based on the ranking of the animals and how he bet. After three rounds, the player with the most points wins.

– La Vallée des Dragons : The goal of the game is to return the dragon younglings to their valley before the nasty wizard gets back to his tower and catches them playing fireball near his home. To help the baby dragons, two players each take a wand and use their magic to transport them back to the Dragon Valley.

Would you need more information about those games or the other games of our collection, do not hesitate to contact us.