Wild Card game descriptions

Tie Breakers for all games can be found here.

2023 HOT NEW GAME #1:  APIARY

GM: Ed Gilliland
Number of Players: 3 – 5
DEMO: Saturday at 9:30am

In Apiary, each player controls one of twenty unique factions. Your faction starts the game with a hive, a few resources, and worker bees. A worker-placement, hive-building challenge awaits you: explore planets, gather resources, develop technologies, and create carvings to demonstrate your faction’s strengths (measured in victory points) over one year’s Flow. However, the Dearth quickly approaches, and your workers can take only a few actions before they must hibernate! Can you thrive or merely survive?

GM: Kurt Runco
Number of Players: 3 – 4
DEMO: Thursday at 2:00pm

Nucleum is a heavy euro board game in which players take role of industrialists trying to succeed during the economic and technological boom of 19th-century Saxony, fueled by the invention and spread of the Nucleum (a nuclear reactor).

Players earn victory points by developing their networks, building and powering urban buildings, securing contracts, and meeting milestones (randomized endgame goals). Each player also gets unique asymmetric technologies, giving them special powers when unlocked. Gameplay is continuous; players take turns one after another with no rounds or phases.

GM:  Rebecca Horovitz
Number of Players: 2 – 4
DEMO: Continuous at vendor booth

Climb the most dangerous massif in the world! In Annapurna you co-operate — or compete — with your fellow climbers to achieve balance on this treacherous, ever-changing mountain. As you explore your mountainside made of cards you will encounter rockslides, yetis, and danger at every turn!

BOOP.

Designer: Scott Brady
Publisher: Smirk & Dagger Games
BoardGameGeek info: boop.

GM: Norman Rule
Number of Players: 2
DEMO: Friday at 2:30pm

A deceptively cute, deceivingly challenging abstract strategy game for two players.  Every time you place a kitten on the bed, it goes “boop.” Which is to say that it pushes every other kitten on the board one space away. Line up three kittens in a row to graduate them into cats… and then, get three cats in a row to win.

EARTH

Designer:  Maxime Tardif
Publisher:  Inside Up Games
Boardgamegeek Info: Earth

GM: Ann Rudolph
Number of Players: 3 – 5
DEMO: Friday at 5:00pm

Earth is an open world engine builder for 1 to 5 players with simple rules but tons of strategic possibilities. With its encyclopedic nature and the enormous number of unique cards and combinations, every single game will allow you to discover new synergies and connections, just as our vast and fascinating world allows us to do!

HEAT: PEDAL TO THE METAL

Designer: Asger Harding Granerud, Daniel Skjold Pedersen
Publisher: Days of Wonder
BoardGameGeek info: Heat

GM: Robert James
Number of Players: 3 – 6
DEMO: Friday at 3:30pm

VOTED GCOM 2023 GAME OF THE YEAR AT THE NEW GAMES EXTRAVAGANZA.  Based on simple and intuitive hand management, Heat: Pedal to the Metal puts players in the driver’s seat of intense car races, jockeying for position to cross the finish line first, while managing their car’s speed if they don’t want to overheat. Selecting the right upgrades for their car will help them hug the curves and keep their engine cool enough to maintain top speeds. Ultimately, their driving skills will be the key to victory!

EXPEDITIONS

Designer: Jamey Stegmaier
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
BoardGameGeek info: Expeditions

GM: Marcy Morelli
Number of Players: 3 – 5
DEMO: Thursday at 11:30am

Expeditions is a competitive, card-driven, engine-building game of exploration. Play cards to gain power, guile, and unique worker abilities; move your mech to mysterious locations and gain cards found among the tiles; use workers, items, meteorites, and quests to enhance your mech; and use power and guile to vanquish corruption.

GREAT WESTERN TRAIL: ARGENTINA & NEW ZEALAND

Designer: Alexander Pfister
Publisher: eggertspiele
BoardGameGeek info: Argentina & New Zealand

GM: John Weber
Number of Players: 3 – 4
New Zealand DEMO: Thursday at 3:30pm

In Great Western Trail: Argentina, you own a vast estancia in Argentina at the end of the 19th century, and you will need to travel the plains of the Pampas with your cattle to deliver them to the main train station in Buenos Aires.

In Great Western Trail: New Zealand, you are a runholder — that is, the owner of a sheep station — on the South Island of New Zealand at the end of the 19th century. Recent years have seen your family farm prosper by diversifying your breeds of sheep and by increasing the value of your wool.

TOURNAMENT NOTE: Argentina and New Zealand will count as one game for scoring purposes.  Points scored for each title will be combined and limited to a maximum of 80 points.

EGIZIA

Designer: Acchittocca
Publisher: Hans im Gluck
BoardGameGeek info: Egizia

GM: Antony Saccenti
Number of Players 3 – 4

The players are builders in Ancient Egypt, competing to get the most fame building different monuments requested by the Pharaoh (the Sphinx, the Obelisk, the Temple, and the Pyramid).

Rules Changes for Tournament Play
  • The 1/10 scoring card will be removed from play.
  • If all players agree, redeal the cards on the river the first turn if the +2 sphinx card appears in the first three slots (before the sphinx).
POWER GRID

Designer: Friedemann Friese
Publisher: Rio Grande Games
BoardGameGeek info: Power Grid

GM: Marcy Morelli
Number of Players: 3 – 5

LOST RUINS OF ARNAK

Designer: Mín & Elwin
Publisher: Czech Games Edition
BoardGameGeek info: Lost Ruins of Arnak

GM: Rich Shay
Number of Players: 3 – 4

Lost Ruins of Arnak combines deck-building and worker placement in a game of exploration, resource management, and discovery. In addition to traditional deck-builder effects, cards can also be used to place workers, and new worker actions become available as players explore the island. Some of these actions require resources instead of workers, so building a solid resource base will be essential.

BEYOND THE SUN

Designer:  Dennis K. Chan
Publisher:  Rio Grande Games
BoardGameGeek info: Beyond the Sun

GM: Chad Weaver
Number of Players: 3 – 4

Beyond the Sun is a space civilization game in which players collectively decide the technological progress of humankind at the dawn of the Spacefaring Era, while competing against each other to be the leading faction in economic development, science, and galactic influence. 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.

MARACAIBO

Designer: Alexander Pfister
Publisher: Capstone Games
BoardGameGeek info: Maracaibo

GM:  Eugene Yee
Number of Players: 3 – 4

The players sail on a round course through the Caribbean, e.g., you have city tiles where you are able to perform various actions or deliver goods to. One special feature is an implemented quest mode over more and various tiles, which tells the player, who chase after it, a little story. As a player, you move with your ship around the course, managing it by using cards like in other games from Alexander Pfister.

CASCADIA

Designer:  Randy Flynn
Publisher:  Flatout Games
Boardgamegeek Info: Cascadia

GM: Marcy Morelli
Number of Players: 3 – 4

Cascadia is a puzzly tile-laying and token-drafting game featuring the habitats and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest. In the game, you take turns building out your own terrain area and populating it with wildlife. On a turn you choose a new habitat tile that is paired with a wildlife token, then place that tile next to your other ones and place the wildlife token on an appropriate habitat. Four tiles are on display, with each tile being paired at random with a wildlife token, so you must make the best of what’s available — unless you have a nature token to spend so that you can pick your choice of each item. Ideally you can place habitat tiles to create matching terrain that reduces fragmentation and creates wildlife corridors, mostly because you score for the largest area of each type of habitat at game’s end, with a bonus if your group is larger than each other player’s. At the same time, you want to place wildlife tokens so that you can maximize the number of points scored by them, with the wildlife goals being determined at random by one of the three scoring cards for each type of wildlife.

TERRAFORMING MARS: ARES EXPEDITION

Designer: Sydney Engelstein, Jacob Fryxelius, Nick Little
Publisher: FryxGames, Stronghold Games
BoardGameGeek info:  Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

GM: Norman Rule
Number of Players: 3 – 4

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is an engine-building game in which players control interplanetary corporations with the goal of making Mars habitable (and profitable).  This game combines the engine building of Terraforming Mars with the action selection of Race for the Galaxy.

OBSESSION

Designer: Dan Hallagan
Publisher: Kayenta Games
BoardGameGeek info: Obsession

GM: John Weber
Number of Players: 3 – 5

You are the head of a respected but troubled family estate in mid-19th century Victorian England. After several lean decades, family fortunes are looking up! Your goal is to improve your estate so as to be in better standing with the truly influential families in Derbyshire.