Apotheca: The Secret Potion Society

Players craft potions in a secret marketplace. Hide ingredients to deceive opponents, and use magical powers to mix concoctions. But beware – your opponents are brewing schemes of their own!

Apotheca is played on a 4×4 grid. Players gain points by making matches of three potions of the same color in a row. The first player to make three matches wins. It’s easily learned, but the combination of asymmetric powers and secret facedown potions make the game a delicious challenge.

On each turn, players take 2 of 4 possible actions:

• Reveal: Reveal a secret potion and gain a gem of that color
• Restock: Draw, look at, and place secret potions on the board until there are exactly 3
• Power: Use one of your active apothecary powers
• Hire: Spend gems to hire new apothecaries

Whenever a player makes a match, they must place it on one of their apothecaries. This removes that apothecary’s power for the rest of the game, so it’s important for players to keep revealing potions, collecting gems and hiring new apothecaries… all while keeping their opponents at bay!

Deduction is key to Apotheca. Players trap each other with clever spatial moves, bluffing and misdirection. The action economy is very well balanced, so every turn offers an opportunity for strategy and tough decisions.

The feeling of the game differs with every number of players:

• 2 player is the most cerebral and controlled
• 3 player is the most chaotic, yet still within your grasp
• 4 player is played in teams, offering neat collaborative gameplay

Vikings: The Board Game

Vikings: The Board Game is a strategy game of exploration and raiding based upon the dramatic television series Vikings that allows players to embrace their inner Viking.

Each winter in the game, players will scheme to acquire appropriate resources while convincing heroes such as Ragnar Lothbrok, Lagertha, Rollo and Floki to support them as they put their longships in the water to raid each summer. Plunder treasures and foreign resources across modular tiles that ensure a different game each time you play, while completing offers to the Seer will ultimately lead a player to victory!

Kodama: The Tree Spirits

The forest is growing fast! As caretakers for Kodama, the tree spirits, you must keep the forest a healthy and lush home for your little friends. Over three growing seasons, you must cultivate trees with the right mix of flowers, insects, and branch arrangements to make your Kodama as happy as possible. Whoever cares for their Kodama best will be remembered for generations!

From the designer of the hit game Kigi, Kodama: The Tree Spirits branches out into a fun new way to play! Grow your tree by placing cards in clever arrangements, being careful to leave room for future growth. At the end of each season, one Kodama will award you points for how well your tree suits its needs. With beautiful art and innovative mechanics, Kodama is an inTREEguing game for the whole family.

 

 

Yashima: Legend of the Deep Woods

The sunlight trickles through the foliage as you set foot into the Deep Woods. Here, the kami are as treacherous as the sinister vines on the forest floor. Treat nature with respect, however, and the leaves just might part to welcome you. What hidden secrets await you, guarded in the thick heart of the wood?

Yashima: Legend of the Deep Woods is a 5th-player expansion to the fast-paced combat game, Yashima: Legend of the Kami Masters. This expansion adds two new kami masters and one new kami, adding a tantalizing array of new character abilities and strategies to the core game!

Gives you everything you need to add one additional player to the base game!
• Are you ready for 5-player free-for-all combat?
• Combine with Yashima: Legend of the Icy Peaks expansion for epic 6-player team-based showdowns!
• Play as Dokubaba, the plague hag, stricken with a vile poison. Use your noxious abilities to drain your foes’ health every turn. Make them fall, before the disease consumes you!
• Play as Toru, the jolly druid, with the power to magically grow plants as easily as he laughs. Sow seeds in the bellies of your enemies, then make them explode for a painful surprise!
• Join spirits with the Fox kami, the elusive guardian of the forest. Use your agility to attack first, then use your strength of spirit to play more tome effects, while preventing the effects of your foes!

 

Yashima: Legend of the Icy Peaks

Up here in the Icy Peaks, the weather is as unforgiving as the villagers. But not every heart here is cold. Prove yourself with shows of honor and solidarity, and the locals will welcome you beside their hearth. Something worse than cold awaits those unfortunate enough to spend the night outside on these mountains…

Yashima: Legend of the Icy Peaks is a 5th-player expansion to the fast-paced combat game, Yashima: Legend of the Kami Masters. This expansion adds two new kami masters and one new kami, adding an epic trove of new character abilities and strategies to the core game!

Gives you everything you need to add one additional player to the base game!
• Are you ready for 5-player free-for-all combat?
• Combine with Yashima: Legend of the Deep Woods for epic 6-player team-based showdowns!
• Play as Yuki, armed with ice and a cold heart. Silence your foes by freezing out their karma and surroundings into deadly terrain.
• Play as Mitsuo, the blind bard, accompanied by his monkey, Saru. Control two miniatures on the board, dancing about your foes from multiple locations!
• Join forces with the Yeti kami, the fearsome guardian of the mountains. Quell your enemies’ effects with a powerful Yeti roar, and make them fear your mighty deck!

Knit Wit

Knit Wit is a word game along the lines of Scattergories, with players trying to think up unique answers to particular categories in order to score points, but instead of using fixed categories, players generate their own categories while playing the game.

To set up, each player takes numbered spools and looped strings based on the number of players, along with an answer sheet. A number of bonus buttons, which have 1-4 holes, are stacked on the table, again based on the number of players. Going clockwise around the table, each player (after the first) places one loop on the table so that it surrounds exactly one spool, then draws a word tag from the box and attaches it to this loop, then places one spool in one section of loop(s) that has no spool in it. (Think of a Venn diagram; two overlapping circles form three sections, with one section having both circles in common and two sections being part of only one circle.)

Once all of the spools have been placed, everyone races to think of words, names, or phrases for each spool based on the word tags associated with that spool. If a spool has three loops around it, for example, it has three words associated with it, and your answer must relate to those words in some manner.

As soon as someone has finished or can’t think of more answers, they grab the topmost button on the stack (the one with the most holes). Once the final button is grabbed, players can’t write more answers. Players then compare answers, crossing out those they have in common with someone else, then scoring points for the remaining answers; each answer is worth as many points as the number of loops around the spool with the same number. Buttons are worth as many points as the number of holes they have, and whoever has the highest score wins.

 

Twilight Squabble

Relive the entire Cold War in ten minutes with Twilight Squabble!

In 1947, the superpowers of the United States of America and the Soviet Union began a new sort of conflict, a struggle in the twilight of World War II. This war centered on the increasing development of nuclear weapons, and as the years passed it seemed like the war would never end — but no one wants to play a card game for decades. Thus, this game presents an abridged version of the Cold War — less of a twilight struggle and more of a twilight squabble…

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Alchemist Class Deck

Alchemists create potent elixirs and concoctions through mastery of deeply secret lore; they can stopper death and grind up time. The Alchemist Class Deck accessory for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game allows players to bring these clever tinkerers to any Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Base Set!

The 109-card Alchemist Class Deck contains three new characters—including a new version of the iconic alchemist Damiel—and both new and familiar allies, items, weaponry, and other boons to carry your character through an entire Adventure Path. This deck can also be used in the popular Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild organized play campaign.

 

Android: Mainframe (Releases on Thursday, 4/28)

::The mainframe at Titan Transnational Bank has been isolated. Its security protocols have been deactivated and the sysops shut out. You have 23 seconds to use a Sneakdoor before the security comes back online. Grab what you can. %@Naga8946::

Android: Mainframe, a fast-paced strategy game set in the not-too-distant future of the Android universe is now at The Wandering Dragon!

In Android: Mainframe, you and up to three opponents become elite cybercriminals known as runners. When the mainframe and fortunes at Titan Transnational Bank are suddenly compromised, it’s time for you to go to work. But it turns out that you’re not the only runner who has been alerted to Titan’s woes, and that means you’re not the only runner in Titan’s servers. It’s time to show your competitors what you can do: execute your programs, establish access points and partitions, and seize control of the mainframe.

Easy to learn and hard to master, Android: Mainframe typically plays in less than half an hour, and its six different identities provide six distinct approaches to the challenges of accessing and securing Titan’s vulnerable accounts. With more than ninety partitions and a total of seventy-five programs, Android: Mainframe is a thriling, high-powered trip into the future of cybercrime!

Runner Versus Runner

What’s better than stealing riches from a helpless megacorp? Stealing riches from a helpless megacorp and demonstrating your superiority over other runners as you do it! In Android: Mainframe, you compete for control of different nodes within Titan’s servers. Lock down a node, and you score its riches. At the end of the game, the richest runner wins.

However, outrunning other runners can be a trick—even trickier than hacking through corporate defenses. While you’re hacking your way into the server, your competitors may very well be hacking your hacks. You might lay down an access point or reroute a data stream only to find your efforts subverted.

At the beginning of the game, you arrive at the Titan mainframe, and you mark your arrival by the placement of your first access point. Then, each turn, you get to take a single action: you can establish another access point, execute a program, or pass. Your goal is to use the programs at your disposal to secure your access points so that they control as many of Titan’s vulnerable accounts as possible.

• By establishing an access point, you add one of your character’s tokens to the game board, placing it faceup on an unsecured node.
• When you execute a program, you can execute any of the generic programs in the program suite, or you can execute one of the three signature programs with which you start the game.
• If you choose to pass, play proceeds immediately to the next player. If all players need or choose to pass, the game ends, and you and your opponents score your runs.

Most of the generic programs write pathways between Titan’s various nodes, allowing you to place a blue partition between the nodes on the board. Whenever your partitions seal off a section of the board containing only your access point or access points, they are “secured” and flipped facedown. They are no longer vulnerable to your opponents’ programs, and you will score the accounts they control at the end of the game.

It’s Chaos Theory’s turn, and she decides to use Zig to secure her access point within a node.

She places the partitions, secures the node, and flips her access point facedown to indicate that the node and her access point are secure and can no longer be manipulated.

Still, programs do more than simply allow the creation of pathways of different shapes. Some programs allow you to disrupt pathways by moving partitions. Other programs allow you to manipulate your or your opponents’ access points. Finally, your signature programs are limited only by their text. Some may delete opponents’ access points, establish multiple access points in a single play, or even grant you an extra turn.

Runners are notorious for breaking the rules and creating chaos, so to get as much money as you can from your efforts, you need to keep your strategy flexible and fluid. You’ll also want to strike quickly whenever you sense a chance to capitalize upon the unique abilities of your signature programs.

Not Your Average Criminals

It’s possible that if some amateur hackers had the right tools they could possibly break into Titan Transnational Bank and access its accounts. It’s doubtful that they’d manage to walk away with a score. You, however, are not an average hacker. In Android: Mainframe, you are an elite runner. More specifically, you are one of six of the most notable cybercriminals in the Android universe.

Whether you choose which runner you’ll become or assign the identities at random, the first thing you do in Android: Mainframe is step into a new identity and gain access to that character’s unique suite of programs, all of which come fully loaded with personality.

	Modified in utero for superior intelligence, Ji “Noise” Reilly disappointed his parents by using his gifts for hacking, and his system intrusions range from damaging viruses which destroy corporate servers to defacing a corp’s Net presence in embarrassing but harmless ways.
	Kate “Mac” McCaffrey is a digital tinkerer who constantly writes, modifies, and reverse-engineers new programs, many of which she has distributed among the cybercriminal community that populate the Shadow Net.
	The dispossessed ristie known only as Andromeda lost her fortune and most of her privilege and access along with it. Knocked to the lowest rungs of civilization in New Angeles, Andromeda swore to recover her rightful place, and NAPD’s Netcrimes Divison has associated her with several high-profile security breaches in which large amounts of valuable data and banking information have gone missing.
	Olivia “Chaos Theory” Ortiz is a wünderkind whose ability to access nearly any server by finding multiple means of ingress inspires jealousy in adults with twice as many years of hacking experience.
	An infamous information broker who views every situation as an opportunity to gain information, Nero Severn has few friends, but a wealth of connections and sources, which provide him information that he consistently leverages to his advantage.
	Adam is an anomaly: a bioroid with a compulsion to hack and who is, by all appearances, operating on a unique set of core directives. The source of his compulsion is unknown, but his ability to invade and take control of a computer system is second to none.

Each of these runners comes with five distinctive programs, and although you’ll randomly narrow them down to three at the beginning of the game, they offer powerful and thematic approaches to the game’s ever-evolving puzzles. Will you play them to take an early lead? Will you use them to block your opponents at key moments? Or will you hold them in your hand to keep your opponents guessing as long as possible?

No matter how you use them, your signature programs are important tools, and they lead to dramatically different play experiences as you swap runner identities from game to game.

The Cash Is Calling

Titan Transnational Bank stands exposed and vulnerable. Key corporate accounts lie undefended. Will you beat your opponents to the haul? Can you find fame and fortune on the year’s biggest run? Prove your worth as a hacker inAndroid: Mainframe. This game of cyberdomination in the Android universe will be at The Wandering Dragon on Thursday, April 28th!

Netrunner: Salsette Island Data Pack (Releases on Thursday, 4/28)

“It is not Jinteki who stand to suffer if the right parties do not win the elections. It is all of us. We are all connected. We are all parts of one greater economy.”
–Raman Rai

Salsette Island, the fourth Data Pack in theMumbad Cycle for Android: Netrunner will be at The Wandering Dragon on Thursday, April 28th!

As Akshara Sareen and her Ēkatā Party ride the surging interest in clone rights to take a lead in the polls ahead of the Indian Union’s national elections, Mumbad’s corporate executives become increasingly willing to forge expedient and beneficial alliances in order to counter the party’s growing political influence and preserve their existing business models. Accordingly, among the sixty new cards in Salsette Island (including a complete playset of nineteen different cards), you’ll find powerful new alliance cards for each of the game’s Corps, including assets and operations that feature variable influence costs and open the door to new types of Corporate deck builds.

Meanwhile, from the slums to the ritziest of bazaars, Salsette Island’s teeming streets offer the game’s Runners myriad places from which they can launch clever new cyberassaults against the Corps. You’ll find the game’s three Runner factions making notable entrances to the slums, mingling at exclusive parties, hitting the bazaars, flying sports hoppers, and garnering the support of new patrons. With a host of Runner cards that focus more on Mumbad’s meatspace than the virtual world, Salsette Island allows you to press your attacks against the Corps more effectively on every front.

Mutually Beneficial Arrangements

While it’s obvious that the debates over clone rights taking place during the Indian Union’s national elections leave Jinteki immediately vulnerable, many of the game’s top Corporate executives have begun taking a longer view, realizing that Jinteki wouldn’t be the only company to suffer should the Ēkatā Party or other groups aligned with the Simulant Abolitionist Movement emerge victorious.

The decision to give clones full citizenship and the rights inherent to citizens of the Indian Union could spur massive changes in the nation’s labor force—changes to wages and worker privileges that could easily lead to large-scale disruptions in the whole world’s economy. Ultimately, these are risks that don’t just concern Jinteki; they concern top execs in every field. Thus, Salsette Island finds the Corps responding to these risks by forming different alliances. New to the Mumbad Cycle, alliance cards, like Jeeves Model Bioroids (Salsette Island, 67) and Executive Search Firm(Salsette Island, 72), permit new deck-builds that reward the partnerships between Corps with reduced (often free) influence costs.

Notably, the handful of alliance cards in Salsette Island include Jinteki VPRaman Rai (Salsette Island, 68), whose ability provides cooperative Corps with the means to work with fantastic consistency. When you draw a card, Raman Rai allows you to lose a click to trade it with a card of the same type in Archives. You make your decision about whether or not to use Raman Rai’s ability when you see the card you draw—not before—so you’ll always know if it’s worth sacrificing your Closed Accounts (Core Set, 84) and a click, for instance, in order to recover a copy of Salem’s Hospitality (Salsette Island, 71). Or you might discard Shock! (True Colors, 73) when you draw it in order to add another Snare! (Core Set, 70) back to your hand.

Raman Rai adds consistency to your deck because his ability allows you to recover the cards you’ve used, meaning you don’t have to work so hard to draw the other copies you built into your deck. In a way, Raman Rai is all about continuing the business you’ve been doing, as you’ve already done it. He’d tell you that there’s no need to shake things up. It’s better business for everyone to keep doing things the way they’ve always been done, and that’s why the other Corps should work with Jinteki and against the Simulant Abolitionist Movement.

Make an Entrance

With its new alliance cards, plus powerful events like Making an Entrance (Salsette Island, 58) and Exclusive Party(Salsette Island, 60), Salsette Island permits the exploration of a wide range of new deck types for both Corps and Runners. How will you use them?

Salsette Island will arrive at The Wandering Dragon on Thursday, April 28th!