Abstract Strategy

This travel edition of Ingenious allows two players to easily engage in a match of wits over lunch, on a plane, or wherever life may take you. A specially molded plastic board holds the tiles and scoring pegs in place, and games only take between 20 and 40 minutes. Ingenious: Travel Edition is a wonderful diversion for family and friends traveling together.

Players use cards to build bridges between islands. When a player dominates an island with bridges, he controls the island. There are three rounds with scoring after each - the total score wins this fast and fun 2 player game!

Take Cribbage and Scrabble, shake well, and you will have Kings Cribbage. The tiles correspond to a standard deck of cards except that there are only two suits (dark brown and light brown). You place the tiles on the board a la Scrabble and try to form the highest Cribbage hand possible. All tiles that are placed must score. Scores are as standard Cribbage for the most part and as in Scrabble you may score in multiple rows and or columns at the same time. No more then 5 tiles may be placed consecutively.

Long ago, the ancient Mayan empire built a city with nine temples, using sacred stone blocks. But somehow, the blocks were all mixed up! Luckily, two priests have knowledge of powerful magics, and they can rebuild the towers without damaging them! As one of these mighty priests, can you outwit your opponent and rejoin the stones of the nine towers?

Contents:

• 9 towers of 5 blocks each
• 30 ladders
• 10 priests
• 1 Raven monolith
• 9 task cards
• game board
• rulebook

By the mid-14th century, the Chinese people had succeeded in freeing themselves from Mongolian domination. With Tai-tsu’s accession to the throne as emperor, a new and independent China emerged. In this game, each player takes on the role of an imperial prince who, with the aid of his royal family members, attempts to acquire more and more wealth and influence for the Chinese people of the Ming Dynasty.

A card representing a combination of several colored dots is placed on the table. Each user has 4 transparent plastic cards also with colored dots in different positions and has to superimpose them to obtain the same combination as the card on the table. This is done by rotating and flipping the cards and trying them in different orders. One difficulty is that you will have to hide some of the dots on cards you placed underneath, to obtain the right combination. The first player to match the pattern shouts "Vitrail!" (or "On the Dot!" or "En el Punto!") and if their copy is correct they win the card. The game can also be played solo, by seeing how many cards you can re-create in a set amount of time.

PÜNCT is the final game of Project GIPF, a series that consists of 6 games and a number of sets with additional pieces. GIPF, the central game of the Project, was initially release in Belgium in 1997. Now, the series is complete. PÜNCT is a connection game: the goal is to link two opposite sites. On your turn, you either bring a new piece into play, or you move a piece that is already on the board. The more pieces you bring into play, the more possibilities you have to make a connection. But each time you put a new piece on the board, you reveal a bit of what your plan is. The trick is to place your pieces in such a way that your opponent will expect you to do something different from what you really have in mind. As such, PÜNCT is not only about making a connection, but also about misleading your opponent! You’ll have to proceed subtly!

Return to the glory of Rome and walk in the footsteps of Rome's elite. In Quo Vadis you play one of the mighty patrician families in the power struggle that will determine of the destiny of Rome, and the world. To win, you must survive the treacherous political waters of the empire and reach the Senate.
Each player starts at the bottom of the political ladder, and tries to move up the board through the committees to reach the Senate. In true Roman fashion, the road to power is strewn with laurels; to win the player must reach the Senate and collect deals and promises, not all of which they have to keep. Players can also use Caesar's favor to advance. But there is only room for five senators at the top....

Qwirkle is as basic as matching colors and shapes! Well-planned strategy is the key to victory. Qwirkle consists of 108 wooden tiles with 6 shapes in 6 colors. Each tile is worth 1 point. Players score points by building lines of tiles that share a common color or shape. Score a “Qwirkle” by completing a line of 6 and receive double points for each tile in that line! The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins!

• Awards:

Mensa Select,

Major Fun,

Parents’ Choice Gold,

Creative Child Magazine Preferred Choice,

The National Parenting Center Seal of Approval ,

2011 Spiel des Jahres

• Contents:

108 thick wooden tiles,

cloth drawstring bag,

instructions

Qwirkle is as basic as matching colors and shapes! Well-planned strategy is the key to victory. Qwirkle consists of 108 wooden tiles with 6 shapes in 6 colors. Each tile is worth 1 point. Players score points by building lines of tiles that share a common color or shape. Score a “Qwirkle” by completing a line of 6 and receive double points for each tile in that line! The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins!

• Awards:

Mensa Select,

Major Fun,

Parents’ Choice Gold,

Creative Child Magazine Preferred Choice,

The National Parenting Center Seal of Approval ,

2011 Spiel des Jahres

• Contents:

108 thick 3/4 inch tiles,

zippered carrying bag,

instructions

In this game by Reiner Knizia, each player has an identical force of warriors, priests, and peasants to use to gain control of the important power figures of Old Japan. The players deploy their forces to the spaces around the power figures. When a figure is surrounded, it is captured by the player with the strongest sympathetic force. To win, a player must gain dominance with one of the powers while getting better support from the other powers than the other players.

A fun way for families and friends to share in playing the cult hit puzzle called Sudoku. The object of Sudoku is to have each column, row, and box grid contain different numbers.
But there's a twist in SuDoku: The Card Game. The object here is to have the least amount of points in your penalty stack while forming a Sudoku puzzle. Your penalty stack comes from not being able to (or be unwilling to) play cards correctly.
Yellow cards form the boxes (and are worth 2 points in your penalty stack) and blue cards surround the yellow cards (and are worth 1 point in your penalty stack).
Games are short and you'll be able to play many games during the evening - and each game is different!

Take It Easy is a true multi-player solitaire in which each player individually completes a hexagon-shaped board with spots for 19 hexagon tiles. There's no limit to number of players if you've got enough sets on hand. One person (the caller) draws a tile randomly and tells the others which of the 27 tiles featuring colored/numbered lines crossing in three directions, with numbers from 1 to 9, it is. "The 9-8-7," for example. Each player then chooses which empty spot on his own board he'll play the 9-8-7. This is repeated until the boards are filled.
The idea is to complete same-numbered lines across your board. Scoring is calculated by multiplying the number on the tile with the number of tiles in the completed line. A complete column of three 9s is worth 27, for example... but a lot of players will hope for five 9s to fill the big column down the middle.
Take It Easy is often compared to Bingo because of the familiar pattern of a number being called and then everybody looking at their cards to play it, and then scoring if a line is completed. But that's as far as the comparison goes. Bingo is sheer luck; Take It Easy is a game of skill.

On Taluva, that South Seas island shrouded in secrecy, raw elemental powers prevail. Powerful volcanoes erupt, pouring their lava into the sea, forming a terrace-like jungle landscape. Four groups try to establish themselves on this island. They search the jungle, beaches, and lakes, looking for the best places to build their huts, towers, and temples. They put their fate in the hands of their gods. Each player makes decisions on how the island grows and where his group builds their huts, towers, and temples. At the end of the game, the temples are the most important for scoring. It may be advantageous for a player to hasten the game end by building all of two kinds of buildings.

From the Gipf series.

The game comes with special pieces that are sand timers. Players flip the timers as they move them, but must not let time run out or they lose their piece.

The desert is treacherous, mysterious, and without mercy. But for those willing to risk the dangers of the shifting, sun-baked sands, the desert holds riches beyond compare.

In Through the Desert, players vie for vital resources found scattered across the sandy wastes. Each player will command a tribe of five nomad chieftains that extend their long caravan chains across the board, one camel at a time, in order to connect with valuable sources of water and oases. Each chieftain under your control is in charge of a single color camel.

Fantasy Flight Games published the game in 2000, and it quickly gained a legendary reputation for being the perfect gateway game, offering plenty of fun for gamers of all ages.

In Through the Desert, a board game from celebrated designer Reiner Knizia, 2-5 players each control a tribe of nomads vying for control of the desert. By establishing caravans and taking over oases, the players gain points as their tribes increase in power.

A beautiful and beautifully simple game of laying a tile before your own token to continue its path on each turn. The goal is to keep your token on the board longer than anyone else's, but as the board fills up this becomes harder because there are fewer empty spaces left... and another player's tile may also extend your own path in a direction you'd rather not go. Easy to introduce to new players, Tsuro lasts a mere 15 minutes and actually does work for any number from 2 to 8.

From the Gipf series.
Tzaar is a game about making choices. Both players have 30 pieces, divided in three types: 6 Tzaars, 9 Tzarras and 15 Totts. The 3 types of pieces form a trinity: they cannot exist without each other. The aim is either to make the opponent run out of one of the three types of pieces or to put him in a position in which he cannot capture anymore. The tricky question the players will have to ask themselves on each of their turns is: “Shall I make myself stronger or my opponent weaker?” Meaning: will you capture an opponent’s piece and make him weaker, or will you jump on top of one of your own pieces and make yourself stronger? If you choose to jump on top of your own pieces too often, you will probably leave your opponent with too many pieces on the board. On the other hand, if you capture too often, you may end up with pieces that are not strong enough at the end of the game. What to do? Up to you to decide!

The goal is to have the fewest number of groups of tiles on the board at the end of the game.
The players take turns placing one of their five tiles on a 9x9 grid and then draw another tile to replace it. There are three tiles which each player can place on each space: a letter, a number, or the item which represents the 3x3 sector of the board the space is in.
If another player has placed a tile it may be captured by playing a legal tile in its place, only if removing the tile doesn't break a group of tiles belonging to the player into more than one group. If players tie for the fewest number of groups at the end of the game, then the winner is the one who captured the fewest opponents' tiles.

From the Gipf series.
Zertz is a fast, dynamic game for 2 players. It is played with marbles on a board that gets smaller and smaller. The aim is to capture a certain number of marbles. To capture you must jump over adjacent marbles as in Checkers.