March 21, 2024 Rules of Play

Next Week's New Releases! Wyrmspan, Art Society, Ticket to Ride Paris, and more!

Wyrmspan

You are an amateur dracologist in the world of Wyrmspan, a place where dragons of all shapes, sizes, and colors roam the skies. Excavate a hidden labyrinth you recently unearthed on your land and entice these beautiful creatures to roost in the sanctuary of your caves.

During a game of Wyrmspan, you will build a sanctuary for dragons of all shapes and sizes. Your sanctuary begins with 3 excavated spaces—the leftmost space in your Crimson Cavern, your Golden Grotto, and your Amethyst Abyss. Over the course of the game, you will excavate additional spaces in your sanctuary and entice dragons to live there, chaining together powerful abilities and earning the favor of the Dragon Guild.

Art Society

In Art Society, you are an art connoisseur trying to impress your peers by putting together the most fashionable art collection of them all! Bid on the hottest works of art, then arrange them on your drawing room wall into a tastefully curated gallery that’s the envy of the local art scene.

But beware! Fashion is fleeting, and trends are difficult to predict. The paintings that you and your fellow collectors do not buy will eventually make their way to the museum, changing the worth of your collection. In the end, whose wall will be the talk of town?

Ticket To Ride: Paris

Welcome to the city of light! Find yourself transported to the glamorous Paris of the roaring twenties. Jump aboard an open platform bus, cruise down Champs-Elysées Avenue, admire the Eiffel Tower, and conclude your day by enjoying a picturesque sunset from a charming terrace in Montmartre — all without leaving your table.

Ticket To Ride: Paris, part of the "Cities" line of Ticket to Ride games, has gameplay similar to the original game, but with a playing time of only fifteen minutes. On a turn, you either collect transportation cards, spend these cards to claim a route on the game board, or draw tickets that show two locations you need to connect with routes.

In Paris, when you claim a blue, white, or red route, you keep a transportation card of this color in front of you instead of discarding all of the cards. When you collect a card of each color, you've made a French flag, then you discard these cards and score bonus points. Vive la France! When a player has two or fewer buses left to place on routes, each player takes one final turn, then they score points for the tickets they've completed and lose points for those unfulfilled.

Sleeping Gods: Primeval Peril

Sleeping Gods: Primeval Peril is a short standalone campaign for one or two players, but will include a variant for playing with 3-4, set in the world of Sleeping Gods and using the same rules. Primeval Peril is set on a dangerous river that winds through lush jungle. It includes new characters and stories so that nothing from the Sleeping Gods base game is spoiled.

Cuba: The Splendid Little War (2nd Edition)

Cuba: The Splendid Little War, from designer Javier Garcia de Gabiola, is a two-player simulation of the third War of Cuban Independence, which lasted from 1895 to 1898. (This was the last of the three liberation wars fought between Cuba and Spain; the previous wars were the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) and the Little War (1879-1880). One player controls the forces of the Spanish colonial government, fighting to retain Cuba; the other player controls the Cuban rebels fighting for their independence.

Gameplay represents the main insurgency and counterinsurgency operations that took place, and players must make key strategic decisions to achieve their objectives while balancing their resources and preventing their opponent from doing the same.

Hapsburg Eclipse 2nd Edition

Darin A. Leviloff's Hapsburg Eclipse is a solitaire States of Siege game on World War One in Eastern Europe from 1914-1918. The player controls the leadership of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, peripherally, the German Central Staff who assumes greater and greater control over their ally. The Austro-Hungarians have unique challenges as they try to survive the onslaught of the “Russian Steamroller” and try to conquer the Serbs in the South. The mission will be complicated by the perseverance of those enemies; the difficulties with new fronts in Romania, the Balkans, and the Italian border; and the difficulty of keeping the Empire's restive nationalities from revolting from Hapsburg Rule.

The war started poorly for the Austro-Hungarians, with major Russian advances in the East and no progress against the Serbians. As time went on and the Austro-Hungarians bounced from one crisis to another, the Germans started to take more control as the price for their aid. In the end, the war was too much for the disparate nationalities of Austria-Hungary to take, and when it became clear that the Central Powers could not win the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated.